Ich bin ein...

Our stand was too fancy,” says Claudia Kaiser ruefully. “People were afraid to come in.” This was at the 2005 annual book fair in Delhi and Kaiser was then, as now, on the international business development team of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the biggest book fair in the world. Kaiser is German and so was her staff — so their stand was too sleek, too brightly lit, too intimidating for Indian fairgoers. In later years, Kaiser says, her team moderated the fancy-ness of their stand (not “stall”, mind) so as not to deter walk-throughs.

I visited the most recent Frankfurt stand in 2010 at the Delhi World Book Fair. It was run by the local unit of the German Book Office, the Frankfurt Book Fair’s international arm. I am sorry to report that it was still terribly fancy — more fancy by far than any other stand (or stall) at the WBF. The theme colours were red and white, and the lights were white and bright. Instead of a walled enclosure, the GBO’s stand had open sides, no entry and no exit. Within, there was a lot of nothing: no clutter, not many books, hardly a clue to what the GBO is about. The few books were slim, beautifully coloured and breathtakingly well made, so that they glowed like lonely jewels on the shiny white shelves.

No sooner had I tiptoed into the white blaze to admire an illustrated children’s book in German than some crisply dressed young person with a nervous smile materialised at my elbow to be of service. Unnerved, I abandoned the book and sidled out again.

So: fail. The Frankfurt stand was still so far ahead that it had fallen behind.

I wonder if this may become true of the GBO’s other work in the country as well. It is, after all, a discomfitingly ambitious organisation — so “pro-active” that it seems un-Indian. But it is run by Indians, notably its youthful director Akshay Pathak.

Here is a sampling of the many things the GBO under Pathak has been involved in since it opened here in 2008. Workshops for Indian publishers on how to make the most of the Frankfurt Book Fair every October. Various capacity-building meets, with sessions on book “rights”, digitisation, IPR and copyright, business strategy, and so on. A course for senior managers in publishing, at IIM-Ahmedabad. Possibly an industry magazine. Courses for illustrators of children’s books. German publishers are good at children’s books, and it’s a ballooning market — so, Jumpstart, a programme to compare ideas from overseas and around India to improve Indian children’s books. A database of translators (from German into English and Indian languages), a special effort that hasn’t yet borne rich fruit.

All these are revenue-generating. There is also the CSR end: LITCAM, a platform to share best practices in literacy improvement.

Claudia Kaiser and her boss Juergen Boos, President of the Frankfurt Book Fair, were in Delhi last week. I met them to try and figure out what they are up to. They’re both quiet and personable, and seemed to consider it so obvious and inevitable that it hardly needed explaining: the aim is to help yank the Indian books world into a publishing industry that can exploit opportunities in a “flattening” world. It’s not altruistic: “For us to be here in India is also protecting Frankfurt,” said Boos — not to mention German publishers.

Is Indian publishing ready to be globalised? No doubt parts of it are. But language and habit are still impediments. For most local publishers the market is in India. It’s possible that the gap between the global and local ends of the trade will widen. What may suffer is the quality of local content, as the talent gets sucked towards the global end.

It’s interesting, and worrying, to know where the future is coming from.

(rrishi.raote@bsmail.in)